Tag: living

2016 has been an interesting and learning year for me. Both personally and professionally.

Personally, I was into my new relationship and was learning to adapt to differential habits we as humans have. It’s interesting how we want everyone else to be like us i.e. force our likings/habits and in the process ruin the relationship altogether. My learning from this is to embrace difference we all have as humans. I am still learning and it’s a long way to go.

Professionally, 2016 was more like reading/learning year for me. I didn’t design much but was reading about design and product development/management. My learning from this journey is that don’t just read articles or watch videos, put them into action. Plus, do one thing at a time and keep your mind focused on one goal until you get a good grip on it. Pretty obvious, right?! Well everyone has their right to their mistakes – a Good mistake that I did, was taking up too many projects at work and doing average in all of them. A year passed and from a design point of view in my career, I was at the same place I was in 2015. I grew very little in terms of enhancing/developing my design skills. Again, that’s another story for another blog post.

This blog post is about a new habit that I am trying to adopt lately. It’s about finding happiness by owning less. It’s about clearing up space around, both physically and mentally for the things that matter the most. It’s about reducing stress while increasing satisfaction and thus happiness in life. It’s about practicing Minimalism in every aspect of life.

This realization of practicing and putting minimalism in place came sudden and strong when I moved to a new apartment this year. In past 3 years, I’ve moved to 4 new apartments, all in 4 different locations/neighbourhood.

House #1 [Delhi]

House #2 [Delhi]

House #3 [Pune]

House #4 [Pune]

This constant change has led me to know more about the things I own. Every time I move to a new apartment, I come across things that I haven’t used for ages, but still kept them for any x number of reasons.

This year, while moving to my 3rd apartment, I noticed that I wasn’t using about 20%-30% of my total stuff and probably will not in near future as well. To give the gist, I had 2-3 shirts that I never wore, a small fridge that I wasn’t going to use because I live in a fully-furnished apt. now which has a bigger fridge, 2-3 extra bed sheets, 3 blue inked extra ball point pens, 2 same color highlighters, so on and so forth.

It was clear that I have hoarded a lot and using very less of my stuff. I’ve tried shedding things in the past but I do it when I am free or have nothing to do on a weekend. But this time I wanted to take this seriously and make this a habit. I needed to shed my belongings.

Starting this year, among my other new year resolutions, I decided to audit my belongings, from big to medium to the smallest thing that I keep, I’ll audit everything, every 3-4 months. But in order to audit them in the most effective manner, I needed a system where I can track all my useless belongings better so later I can come back to it and decide to throw, donate, or sell.

Here’s how I am doing it:

I am auditing every section of my house every 3rd or 4th month depending upon my availability and stuff hoarded along the way. After shedding a little in the last 6 months, I still have 3 closets to review.

I have divided 4 sections for 4 weekends for the audit month. For example, I’ll audit kitchen the 1st weekend, bedroom room on 2nd, washroom on 3rd, and if anything is left, I am keeping the 4th weekend for that. Since I live in a studio apt., I don’t have rooms i.e. there’s only one room which has attached kitchen and washroom + a small balcony, but dividing them into sections is still easy.

Maintain a note – Track everything. I am using Evernote to keep track of things that I am not using. You can use a notebook or a A4 paper. Don’t let this be an excuse. Just use anything to remember what you’re not using and can shed. Ex:

Action time! Sell, donate or throw – Just do it! Once I’ve identified the items I’m not using or going to use, from different rooms/sections of my house, I decide what to do with them. I am using a combination of The 20-20 Method and The KonMari Method to decide what to do with my items. [I’ve explained what both of these rules mean below]

Rules you can follow:

You can use different rules or a combination of them while auditing and deciding what to do. I’ll list 3 of them here:

The KonMari Method™ by Marie Kondosays (simplifying here) that if your belongings don’t spark joy when you hold them or when you’re around them, you should discard them. This is quite subjective and needs to be understood before applying.

One Job, Multiple solutions Method says if you have multiple items for doing the same job, you can just keep one and shed the rest. For example, if you have 10 pens and you usually use 1-2 of them, you should shed the rest. People often keep things for the sake of keeping it. A lot of us are hoarders in general and like to collect stuff. Remember that collecting for the sake of it, is dangerous. It adds up to your space mentally and physically. You’ll spend more time maintaining stuff that you don’t own compared to using that time to do something you love.

So what’s my progress?

I’ve started auditing my stuff this year but will be doing this more seriously now. Here are things that I’ve shed so far (with details):

This will be an ongoing process and I’ll keep updating this post. If you want to stay updated and follow me on my minimal journey, you can follow me on my Instagram Profile – I’ll be updating there too.

If you’re auditing your belongings or just starting up, I’d love to know your process and the journey so far. Feel free to mention in comments!

Now-a-days I ask myself a simple question – “What are the things I want to do before I die?” – The list is long and it keeps on growing.

When I thought that I wanted to become a product designer, I started working very hard to achieve that goal. Now when I look back from where I started and compare it to the goal that I’ve set, I realize that I have climbed only a few branches of the tree and the crown is still very far. If you ask me – “what did I do to get where I am today (in the field of designing)?” I will answer that with – “only hard work and doing things that make me happy”. I started setting small goals and did everything to achieve them. But did I enjoy every moment of those days when I was designing? No! Because I was pushing myself hard and didn’t give other adventures a room to entertain. When I wasn’t designing, I was engaged in random acts, like checking my facebook notifications, surfing the internet, playing computer games all day long, which are also a way to relax (to some extent), but are useless most of the time.

Since the day I was born i.e. 20 years ago from today, I have lived 7,305 days….wait wait wait….you see, 7,305 days?! That’s huge. REALLY HUGE and there are only few days or moments that I remember and can tag as ‘remarkable’ (take for example 18th of September of 2012, Tuesday was the day when I launched my portfolio website). And due to these facts, there I was, again asking few questions to myself: What I was doing the rest of 7,255 days? (Approximately taking 50 days as productive ones), Why is that I didn’t enjoy every moment or each day? The answer was very simple. I was LIVING MY LIFE IN A FAST LANE.

Today, we live in a society where everyone desires more. Everyone wants a bigger house, a better car, more money, more respect, increment in salary, promotion and what not! To achieve those dreams, we started living a life in which we are always working to get to a better position. We neglect what we have and pursue better life (of course that’s important because what’s the point of living a life in which we don’t grow). But in this process of getting better, we ignore many other beautiful things happening around us. Everything moves so fast that we barely get a chance to witness those beautiful and magical moments. In short, we stop enjoying life and we hardly know it. And that is called living life in a fast lane.

So what’s the way out? The answer I figured out and also suggested by many is to: LIVE IN PRESENT or (in simple terms) to SLOW DOWN. By living in present, we enjoy almost everything. We don’t have to wonder about our past neither care about the future. We simply focus on our present. Focusing and living in present means knowing more about ourselves, caring about everyone, spending our time with our loved ones rather than checking facebook notifications, being polite to everyone, getting close to nature and admiring its beauty, to choose between things that are more important to you, in which you find the joy…..and the list goes on.

What living in present can reward us with is beyond our imagination. Just to point out a few, it will make us more contented, organized, calm, generous, optimistic, and modest, who lives to inspire, who encourages people, and who has less weakness and more strength.

So, I am going to try and slow things down a bit from now on so that I can enjoy this beautiful life. I know it’s very hard to be consistent on this path of choosing between actions which promises to deliver equal amount of joy as compared to the hard work and dedication involved. But I will try because in the end when I die, I want my eyes closed but heart open.